Washington State Archives: Louise Gayton Adams

As part of the United States' Bicentennial celebration, the Washington State Archives conducted an oral history project which focused on the Black community in Seattle and King County. 

These 69 interviews were conducted in 1975 and 1976 by noted local historian Esther Hall Mumford and include audio, transcripts, and negatives.

This 1976 interview with Louise Gayton Adams (1906-1988) provides a vivid look into the life of a Black middle-class family in early 20th-century Seattle. 

The daughter of pioneers James Taylor and Magnolia Scott Gayton, Louise recalls her father’s arrival in Seattle around 1889, where he helped fight the Great Seattle Fire, and his long career as a federal bailiff. 

She describes her rural childhood in Hazelwood (now Enatai in Bellevue), where her family lived in crude shacks, raised livestock, and she attended a one-room schoolhouse. 

As a teenager in the 1920s, Louise was part of a close-knit social circle that centered on music, house parties, and formal dances, eventually graduating from Garfield High School in 1926. 

Her professional life spanned work as a secretary for the First A.M.E. Church to a decades-long career as a caterer for wealthy Seattle families, while her later reflections touch on the heartbreak of the Japanese Relocation and the varying paths taken by her peers. #blackhistorymonth

Listen to her story here